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Thursday, March 8, 2012

Animonths: Art Maker

Though we in the states will have no idea what the context is about, since the app is based on Australian children's television show Play School, the new app Art Maker (currently FREE, iPad only) provides a great tool to harness animation for speech and language development. The app allows you to choose from 6 settings (beach, farm, etc), use a plain colored paper background, or a photo from your camera roll "to bring Play School into your world." After you add characters and other props, you record as you speak and move items around the screen in order to create an animated movie that is saved within the app.

The doggie built a sandcastle, but it is about to be destroyed by a wave!

Art Maker is essentially a simplified version of Toontastic, in that it allows you to just create one scene, but its look and feel (kind of a paper-and-fabric craftsy motif) are well worth checking out. I like that the app also allows you to take a snapshot of your scene. Also, when you click on any of the characters and props with a puzzle piece icon, you'll be able to assemble that element as a "puzzle" before using it in the scene (a good opportunity to work on describing by parts).

This app will definitely appeal to preschool and primary school students in order to target vocabulary, concepts, sentence formulation, cause and effect relationships, sequencing, narrative, social skills, and articulation, voice or fluency (with recorded feedback).